


Brotherly Rabbit/Spine feels

by meefling



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meefling/pseuds/meefling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why would you do that? ESPECIALLY on stage?!"<br/>"Th-Th'Spine, it was-was-was meant ta be a-a joke--"<br/>"It wasn't damn funny! Don't EVER do that again, even offstage!"<br/>"What's the big deal with you?! E-e-everyone thought it-it was pretty funny!"</p><p>(this was my story for a prompt on tumblr a couple days ago. 'Write the most sad SPG fanfic you possibly can!'. With that, be warned... Also can't think of a good title...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brotherly Rabbit/Spine feels

"Why would you do that? ESPECIALLY on stage?!"

"Th-Th'Spine, it was-was-was meant ta be a-a joke--"

"It wasn't damn funny! Don't EVER do that again, even offstage!"

"What's the big deal with you?! E-e-everyone thought it-it was pretty funny!"

"Well I didn't, Rabbit! You should've known it would hurt when you did that to me!" the Spine growled out with venom. Rabbit trembled away, clearly his methods of changing the younger robots' mind were in vain.

"I-I have problems too, ya know." Rabbit stated, sadness dripping from his words. "Ya don't even know ha-ha-ha-half of 'em."

"I'm pretty sure I do." The Spine said, completely sure. He brought up a clenched fist, with one thumb out. "You have a stupid little stutter that people think is 'cute' or something." His index finger joined his thumb. "You have horrible legs," Another finger. "Your body is filthy as crap," Ring finger. "You're so damn old," Pinkie. "You're the most insensitive little--"

"Spine please!" Rabbit pleaded, oil gathering at the edges of his optics. The Spine either didn't notice, or didn't care about the sharp pain that Rabbit's voice box was emulating. The Spine clenched his fist again, and thrust it towards Rabbit's face. The blow forced Rabbit backwards, falling with a loud clatter to the ground, hands over his dented face.

"That's not even all I've got, Rabbit," the Spine growled, stepping over and kneeling beside Rabbit. He got real up close to the old robot's audio receptors and spoke in a whisper. "You'd be destroyed otherwise."

Rabbit trembled heavily, not being able to help the sobs that his voicebox set free.

"You are not human," he muttered, and Rabbit cried out to interrupt, but the Spine just stood and kicked the robot in the legs, silencing him with a stifled yelp. "You aren't even close. You're a cold piece of metal." Rabbit tried to intervene again, hands coming away from his face. The Spine stepped around swiftly and kicked his back, making him arch it and shutting him up again. "You were only made to impress some girl who's long dead. You should've been scrapped by now." he smirked, making Rabbit shrink more into himself as he looked at the taller robot through his fingers.

As the Spine moved to walk out of the room, he kicked Rabbit in the chest, hard, and heard a sharp crack. For a moment, he hesitated, but was on his way out the doorway before he thought to actually look at what damage he'd done to the older automaton.

Michael would fix him up and he'd be all better. He'd wipe Rabbit's memories of their little fight here, and that would be that, until next time.

OoOoO

He was in a coma.

Well, a robotic coma. Kind of like a permanent stasis. There was major damage to his internal memory drives and his wired circuitry in his head. His legs were dysfunctional entirely, he wouldn't be able to move them knee-down until he got them fixed. The biggest piece of damage was, by far, done to his blue matter core. The protective glass around it had a crack in it. Not a huge one, only about an inch across the glass panel, but that was really something, considering that the glass was designed to be waterproof and fireproof.

Michael was working on him, furiously attempting to fix everything he could while respectively only using the parts Pappy had given him. Soon, the young musician realized that it would be impossible to completely fix him unless they used new copper sheets and new circuitry. His memory could be reloaded carefully onto new chip to keep it safe. They'd create a new auto-update wireless backup for him, they'd close all the open sections of copper where some of Rabbit's internal gears and wires were exposed at his joints and on his torso and head. They could...

OoOoO

"Michael?" Steve asked, looking over at the weary-looking mechanic.

"He won't wake up," came his raspy voice. "He won't respond, he won't be fixable without new pieces, he won't--"

"Who won't?" The Spine asked. Michael jolted, not realizing that the other automaton was there. Steve looked over.

"Rabbit won't." he replied for the exhausted One Man Band. "He got beaten up real bad by a--hey!" Steve yelped when the Spine sprung to his feet from the chair he'd been sitting in, and bolted out of the room. Michael collapsed when he passed, stunned . Steve walked over to the tired man and tried to help him up, looping one arm over his shoulder.

"Sleep time, I think, big guy," he grunted as he began to half-drag, half-assist the man in walking to his guest room.

OoOoO

"Rabbit!" The Spine cried, making his entrance known to whoever was in the room. Nobody was, save for a powered-down Rabbit. The tall automaton took long, quick strides across the room to the table where Rabbit was laid upon. He gasped and stumbled backwards when he saw the damage.

Dents in his plating, his sensitive copper chest plates, his once-beautiful faceplate now crushed in and destroyed, his vents effectively cut off. His legs were disassembled below him, from the knee down. His arms were laid loosely at his sides, and there were dozens of little dents and scrapes in the metal that he hadn't ever seen before.

What caught him completely off-guard was the decently-sized crack in the robot's blow matter power core. It should have been impenetrable, unbreakable, completely sealed in... but it wasn't, it was broken and for all he knew, Rabbit was gone, and he wasn't going to come back. 

He did this.

The Spine did this to Rabbit. Not only physically, but verbally too. His insults would have crushed the Jon, murdered Hatchworth, disappointed Pappy. He didn't even realize what he'd been doing this entire time.

He'd call Rabbit out on a harmless joke, beat him up to take out his general frustrations, talk down to him as if he really were all the things he'd been accused of being, then leave him for Michael to fix.

"Ra-Ra-Rabb-bbit," he stuttered out, reaching forward to grab the old, fragile automaton's hand. "... Raaa-aabbit, Rabb-ab-abbit-it-Rabbit, Rabbiii-biiiiit...!" he kept on saying the robot's name, having no idea what else to say to him. He was well aware that his optics had over-lubricated and oil was drawing pitch black trails down his perfectly-chiseled face. He just stood there, holding Rabbit's hand up to rest over his own very active power core. He closed his glowing eyes and tried to sense if Rabbit at least was still there, even if he were offline.

And he was offline. He would remain that way for a long time.

OoOoO

"I think he's lost it,"

"Nah, he'll be fine. This happens sometimes."

"... How do you know that?"

"I'm their mechanic, aren't I?"

"Well one of 'em."

"Shush, you."

"Anyway--Spine?" Steve called into Rabbit's stasis chamber. It'd taken them some time to pry him away from Rabbit himself so that Peter and Michael could attempt to repair him more.

"Is he okay?" he asked simply, lying down, curled up on Rabbit's floor.

"He might be..." the Spine shot up when Michael started speaking. "We need you to come talk to him a little, he really wants to see you."

"I..." he cut himself off, thinking. Rabbit probably would just tell him how sorry he was for upsetting the Spine so much, and he wouldn't be able to bear hearing his older brother saying something like that to him, over something that was his own programming's fault anyways. "I'm sorry but, I'm going to stay here." he smiled at Michael, which unnerved the human.

"You are?" he asked, incredulously. After spending so much time prying the autmaton off of his copper companion, now he didn't even want to see him? "Alright then, um, suit yourself. Come down to the shop whenever you want to, alright? We aren't doing anything serious, so just drop on by when you're ready." he offered, turning and walking away.

Steve stayed behind for an extra second or two to watch the Spine curl back up on the carpeted floor, before following after Michael.

OoOoO

"SPINE!"

That was the first thing that Rabbit shouted when he powered on again. His bellows were working overtime and his power core was humming loudly in his chest.

"Rabbit, shhh," Peter Walter VI gently put a hand on the automaton's shoulder. "It's okay, Spine's safe, he's in your room last we checked." he looked over at Michael, who was putting away their unused materials from their little patch job on Rabbit. "Michael's going to tell you what happened to make you go into stasis for so long, alright?"

Michael looked over, confused, before Peter walked over and took the sheet of copper from his hands and walked off with it to put it away. Michael shrugged and walked up to Rabbit as the automaton sat up with no difficulty for once. He eyed Michael with a look of suspicion and fear.

"Spine. Please let me see him." he pleaded, but Michael gently raised a finger to the automaton's lips, beginning to speak himself.

He explained from when they'd found him in one of the practice rooms, in stasis and covered in dents, scrapes, cuts in his metal, how much of a mess his circuits had been, et cetera. How they'd carried him down the hall to the workshop and fixed him. Where they'd fixed him.

Where they'd put in brand new parts.

Rabbit looked down in shock at that part, photo receptors quickly analyzing his own body. His knees were actually capped, no exposed gears or wire. So were his elbows and shoulders and the area around his waist. Speaking of torso, he actually had one that filled in. There was more room for circuitry and the boiler and bellows. His blue matter core had a brand new, more stationary-looking glass that the Spine had been upgraded with years ago.

Needless to say, he was absolutely pissed at them for upgrading him so damn much while he was vulnerable, but quickly overrode that feeling with the urgent need to see the Spine.

"The Spine." he demanded. Michael sighed and stepped aside, gesturing with his arm that he could get up. He swung his newly-balanced legs over the edge of the table, hopping off and waling unstably and unbalanced at first before he got the hang of it. As soon as he was out the doorway and used to walking on his practically new legs...

He ran.

Right past the windows, the pictures in frames, the pictures out of frames, random chairs in the hallway, one of the Walter Girls, another automaton, and finally arrived at the doorway to his own stasis chamber.

Before he could even say one thing, he noticed the Spine sprawled out on his back on the floor. The younger robot was completely unclothed (not that it mattered) and covered in dents and scrapes, dripping oil and water. Some patches of his metal were torn, as if someone had punched a hole clean through it. Rabbit could see his wires, his circuit boards, everything that the Spine hid just so he could feel like a...

"SPINE!" he shouted, lunging forward and gathering the Spine in his arms. His optics were still glowing bright green and he was completely conscious, puffing a profuse amount of steam when he was grabbed. Rabbit's optics started to over-lubricate again and he downright sobbed overtop of his younger brother, holding him close. The Spine protested weakly, physically rather than verbally, gently pressing his palms against Rabbit's chest and arms and head...

He gave up fighting it at last, and wrapped his arms around his older brother, his own optics over-lubricating. He started to murmur to Rabbit how sorry he was for his mistakes, Rabbit countering with apologies of his own. Both automatons simply clung to each other.

"... I love you Rabbit..." the Spine croaked out from his damaged vocoder, managing without a stutter. Rabbit hiccupped and rubbed a newly rubber-padded finger across his eyes to pick up the beads of oil, smiling at his brother.

"I love you too, Spine." he whispered, continuing to hold his brother, a huge weight lifting from both their shoulders upon seeing each others' smiles, however distorted they were. Rabbit just sat on the ground, beginning to control his leaking optics, and wouldn't let go of his brother. He just kept holding him. Even when there were still so many questions. Even when the Spine began to relax more into Rabbit's gentle hold.

Even when his little brother no longer held him back.


End file.
